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Republican Memes and Propaganda

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For years the Republicans have been very good at messaging, sadly those messages have rarely been truthful. Today there are many Republican memes disguised as Progressive Democratic opinions. The goals of these Trump Republicans are simply to divide. By dividing the opposition through such dishonest propaganda, these Republicans are trying to cling to power. These Republican memes differ according to whom they are aiming at. Each meme has the same goal, to divide everyone left of center.

These Trump Republicans want us to believe that Bernie Sanders cost Hillary the election. This meme is an outright lie. Bernie actually helped Hillary, by campaigning for her and inspired her to take a more progressive stand. This energized and excited her ratings to the point that she actually defeated Trump by 3 to 4 million votes. Hillary was polling behind Trump before the primaries and afterward, she beat him. This is a fact which the Republicans want to keep people from looking at and definitely from talking about, Trump lost the election. No one loses the popular vote by 3 to 4 million and wins the electoral college unless that is, there is some hanky panky going on, which was exactly what happened. In those swing states where Trump barely won, his henchmen blocked the counting of hundred of thousands of Democratic ballots. Had those ballots been counted, Hillary would have won the electoral college and be sitting in the White House today. That makes Donald Trump an illegitimate and illegal occupant of the White House, which again is something the Right would rather that no one was talking about.

The next meme would have us believe that Hillary and her companions removed Bernie supporters from the election rolls and was behind the media ignoring Bernie. Where some of the Hillary supporters were less than friendly towards Bernie supporters, the majority treated them like family. As to removing voters, well since the 2000 election, Republicans have been removing Democrats with several dirty tricks. The latest is their ‘Cross Check” scheme, which claims for example that one person named John Eric Smith in Oregon is the same John Mark Smith in New Mexico and the same John Bryan Smith Maine, all one person voting in three states. They claim that there are so many people doing this around the nation, even though the middle name and Social Security numbers do not match, Republicans claimed that they were all the same person and removed each one, who most likely were Democrats. How did they know who was a Democrat, you ask? They aimed at African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Hispanic-Americans because these groups tended to vote Democratic. Republicans used this dirty trick to remove five to seven million Democratic voters for the 2016 election. Out of all these supposed multiple voters, not one was arrested! Why? Simply because that would have exposed this cross-check scheme as a fraud.

Another group which these Trump Republicans targeted were the newly registered voters. Those Bernie supporters were largely in that last group. So, I ask, who has the record of removing voters, Democrats or Republicans? Who is more likely to be behind this crime? The answer is the Republicans and that makes the odds very good that these Trump Republicans were behind these illegitimate removals of Bernie voters. Of course, they want to project their crimes onto the Democrats.

As to the media freezing out Bernie, we all know that the Republican meme about a Liberal media is pure nonsense. All those media outlets are owned by Conservative Republicans who despised Senator Sanders and feared that if he was to win the Election, he would break up their monopolies. Also, if Hillary’s people were behind the media freeze of Bernie, why did Trump get almost three times of the free media coverage than Hillary? Logically, if the freeze was a product of the Clinton campaign, she would have been the one with two billion dollars of free coverage.

I more than understand how people are angry over the media freeze. As a Bernie supporter, I was ferocious at the despicable treatment of Bernie. I remember driving home as I listened to the coverage of the New Hampshire primary on NPR. First, it reported the order of the Republican primary, Ted Cruz came in third, John Kasich second and Trump took first place. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton finished second and Bernie Sanders was the winner. Then they began to air the speeches of the candidates starting with Cruz, followed by Kasich and Trump on the Republican side, then they aired Hillary’s speech, but that was where they stopped. Bernie won and they would not even air his speech! That was beyond outrageous, I was and still am steamed at how the media bias has been used against Liberal candidates, but we must not be duped into blaming the wrong people. All of these violations of our democracy are the product of GOP treasonous treachery.

The next meme states that Bernie isn’t even a Democrat and as such, Democrats should have nothing to do with him or his supporters. Oh yeah, let us divide our forces and give everything to the Trump Republicans. While it’s true that Bernie is independent of the party bosses, he has always caucused with the Democratic Party, you see, Bernie Sanders is an old style New Deal Democrat. Most Democrats are returning to those values of FDR’s New Deal. Officially, yes, Bernie is an Independent, but he supports the Democratic Party, so much that he is teaming up to promote unity. Every family has its differences and fights, but we don’t let those divide us.

Another meme is that Bernie is too far to the Left, that he is a Communist. Besides wanting to divide our forces, the Republicans want to discredit Bernie because he is the most popular public figure. The only way that Bernie is too far to the Left is if the person making the accusation is an extreme Right-wing Fascist. As to the charge of being a Communist, this is an outright lie repeated by people who do not know the meaning of Communism. They have never read any books about Communism, like “The Communist Manifesto” “Das Kapital” just to name two, such people have the historical knowledge of a ten-year-old child. Bernie Sanders calls himself a Democratic Socialist, which is not Communist, in fact, it is just another name for what the Founding Fathers called themselves.

Before our the American revolution, virtually the only form of government was one ran by and for the nobility, the rich. The lands, mountains with the cattle, the deer and all that lived within belonged to the kings, queens, lords, and dukes, in short to the nobility. Everything was owned by the extremely rich. Our revolution changed all that. Instead of the roads and lands belonging to royalty, in America, they belong to the public. The fire departments, police departments, post office, schools, roads, water works, and military, for example, all belongs to the public. This is at the heart of being a republic. Such things are owned and ran by We the People, in other words, the government. This also known as Socialism where the government owns certain things which private companies or individuals either cannot or will not do without corruption. We called Democratic Socialism, Democratic Republicanism. That is right, the original meaning of Republicanism was the same as Socialism, a term which had yet to be coined. A new term was necessary because, by the time that Europeans began to adopt the American form government, the term “Republic” had been corrupted by dictatorships. So, the Europeans decided to use the term “Democratic Socialism” which had a more positive feeling, but was still copying the American form of government.

It was this form of government that allowed the development of the free enterprise system which gave rise to entrepreneurship, where just about anyone could go into business for themselves. This should not be confused with Capitalism which is the making of money with money. The Capitalist is someone who does not do any of the actual work, he/she makes an income off of someone else doing the work. I know that this makes the Capitalist sound like a leech, but that is not necessarily the case. Often, the Capitalist is providing the necessary money which runs a company that needs workers. In that way, the Capitalist is a good guy, where that changes is when they devalue the labor of the worker with artificially low wages or in some cases use forced labor, slavery. After our revolution, the Capitalist left the united states for Canada or England. Contrary to a misconception, Democratic Socialism (or Republicanism) is not necessarily the opposed to Capitalism, which simply needs strong regulations. Unregulated Capitalism allows for slavery, unsafe food, unsafe water or unsafe working conditions. All of this is to say, that neither is Bernie nor the movement is too far to the left nor Communist.

Another meme is that Hillary and the Democrats moved too far to the left and need to move to the Right in order to win. This says that Hillary lost because she allowed Bernie to push her to the left. This meme is again lying about who really won. Moving to the right would ensure even more losses for the Democratic Party because this is a Liberal nation. The Right has for years tried to make Liberal a dirty word, but it is a great word which George Washington said that not only was he a Liberal that he hoped that this would ever be a Liberal Nation. When asked about the issues like a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body, about increasing wages, about student loan forgiveness, improved Medicare for everyone, for justice and ending discrimination 75% to 80% of Americans agree with the Liberal side of those issues. To put it simply, we cannot move too far to the Left for most Americans.

This next meme turns the last one on its head, it says that the Democratic Party is too far to the Right and corrupt, and as such should be left behind for a new party, a pure party without any corruption. This meme is a half-truth, yes there are Conservative Democrats, but they are a minority. The majority of the Democratic Party is Progressive and Liberal. That’s right, the biggest caucus in congress is the Progressive caucus. BTW, Bernie Sanders started that caucus. As to corruption, sure, whenever human beings are involved there will be some corruption. When we run into corruption, we do not turn tail and run, we confront that corruption and remove it. Let me say, that it will be a lot easier to remove the little corruption which might be found within the Democratic Party than to try to clean up the mass corruption in the Republican Party. The reason that these Trump Republicans want people to start a new party is that it will divide the Progressive/Liberal vote and stop the Left from voting. Lets say for argument, that we were able to create a new party which might started out pure, by the time that party became big enough to be effective, it too would be facing problems of corruption. So, why wait to fight corruption when we can go after it right now?

The last meme is a false equivalence, which says that it is the same on all side. Example: there are just as many scientists on both sides of the Global warming debate, when in fact 100% of the scientists who do not work for the fossil fuel industry agree that Global warming is a fact and man made.

These Republicans use the same false equivalence by saying that both parties are the same, when in fact the Democratic Party works to make the lives better for the poor and the middle class, whereas the Republican Party works for the betterment of the wealthy.

They use this false equivalence to justify the violence from the Alt-Right which just killed and maimed a whole group of people. Trump had the nerve to say that there was racism, bigotry and violence on many sides. No Mr. Trump, you are a liar! It was not on many sides, it was only on your side. Yes, Trump is still a card carrying racist! There is not an Alt-Left contrary to Foxnews, who would have us believe that the Left is just as bad as the extreme far right. That is simply a lie! No one on the Left was running down these racists with a car, there has never been any White fascists found hanging from a tree in front of their homes and there were no violent attacks against these racists by the Left. This is just another false equivalence.

What is the Alt-Right? Well, imagine that the Neo-Nazis and the KKK had a baby, it would be named, the Alt-Right. The name is simple another attempt to deceive. There is nothing like it on the Left, there is no Far-Left like there is an extreme Far-Right. The Republicans are famous for using the Nazi tool of projecting their acts onto their opponents. We denounce them as liars!

Instead of repeating these Right wing memes, we need to be focusing on the issues which Bernie has been promoting for years, healthcare for everyone, an improved Medicare for everyone, affordable education, student loan forgiveness, strengthen and improve Social Security, affordable housing, living wage jobs, enough income so that Americans can save for the future, putting people over profits, keeping jobs in America, keeping strong regulations on corporations, to force the corporate world to act responsibly and prosecute the criminal activities of those bad corporations, justice for all, to legalize life in America, the right to choose for one’s self what happens to our bodies, to choose for ourselves what religion if any that we practice, the right not to see our hard earned money go for unnecessary wars and to see the rich corporations and individuals pay their fair share of taxes. We also, must not forget to end the efforts to block Americans from voting and having those votes counted. Then we should ask, which party is most likely to pass those issues into law? Not the Republicans, maybe one or two might ally with us, but not the large majority. It is the Democratic Party which will put those issues into practice. So, which party is more in tune with our ideals? That is the question that we need to be asking, repeatedly.

The reason for this is that there is only one party with the will and the power to champion those issues which we stand for. Of course, there are a few other parties with the will but lack any power to pass these issues. Before we talk about starting or getting behind a third party, we need to have serious election reform which we will talk about more later. For now, we must remember that the reason for all of the phony Republican memes is simple, they don’t want us talking about the issues that Americans care the most about. Instead, these Trump Republicans want us to be fighting over petty little differences and to dividing ourselves so badly that we do not get any of these issues accomplished. Like it or not, some times we have to bury old hurts and even to make friends with individuals and groups whom we do not like, in order to defeat a bigger foe. The nice thing is, by uniting behind the issues which matter most to us, we will be able to reshape the Democratic Party into what it should be, a party for the people.

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